A wonderful article by ChrisM - Original HERE
"A knight should
be bold, fair, courteous and well-mannered, generous and loyal, not
foolish or rash, and should speak fairly without discourtesy. A
knight should be all this, and also proud and fierce to his enemies,
and kind to his friends." -Durmart
Let's begin our
discussion of SM spirituality on something of a tangent: the people
you have surely met at community functions who claim to have been
"trained" in some sort of "ancient order." Some
say they are "old guard" which actually means something.
Others claim to be "the old school" or in "Classic
style" which means nothing, or, more accurately, means whatever
you want it to mean. Some describe Roissy-like training academies in
Europe, Japan, or other exotic locales, and often stress secrecy and
exclusivity in their lengthy, impromptu descriptions.
So far as I know, none
of these ancient domination training academies really exist. No
historical literature, no websites, no consistency in the stories
told by "graduates" are ever provided. No pictorials in
"Shiny" or "Skin Two" whose lifeblood is
publicizing all things fetish. None of my gay brothers, who have a
longer continuous heritage than us hets, has evidence of ancient SM
academies (though some do find it a hot fantasy). Its true that in
recent years, SM training academies like Butchmans in Las Vegas, have
opened their doors to students. And For the past ten years, GMSMA has
been teaching a fifteen session tops school for its members. The
training of couples have long been part of the dominitrix's trade.
And there have always been, clusters and communities where sex and
sado-erotic activities were shared. Pompeii has frescoes testifying
to this. Even our venerable Ben Franklin was a member of London's
infamous hellfire club, an exclusive SM brothel, catering to the well
heeled and exotic of taste. But if Knightly Orders of SM do exist,
they do a good job of pretending they do not. Still I meet two or
three people a year who give varying claims of having been through
them. These purported students often speak in a hodgepodge of martial
arts lingo, Gor Novels, and Jedi-knighthood which itself was a 1970's
hodgepodge of Tolkein, King Arthur, and John Wayne Westerns. This
sense of pomp carries over into the moody elevator music like
"Enigma" so ubiquitous at SM functions, and use of
prenominals like "Sir" which, in times past, signified
knighthood. You see it in their solemn, deportment and in the
Halloween-like outfits worn without a shred of humor or irony.
While its hard not to
grin at such pretensions, they actually form the tip of a very
interesting iceberg. What do people hope to convey when they rather
grandly claim to have studied "in France" or to have been
trained in a Zen bondage school in Tibet? What impression is intended
when some nice guy named Larry introduces himself as "Sir"
Larry? While this doesn't convince me of the reality of Secret SM
societies of Olde, it does convince me of something more tangible:
the yearning many feel for this activity we share - SM, BD, BDSM, CP,
whatever you want to call it - to be about more than merely smacking
ass. These boasts and fabrications (who knows? One may prove genuine
someday!) show a desire for a practice of SM with a deeper reality
transcending mere sexual hedonism, and providing access to hidden
mysteries. People want meaning, want sacredness, want lives lived
abundantly. Many are looking for more than a way to get their rocks
off but the kinds of intangibles we associate with the martial arts
of the far east. A discipline teaching not only physical skill but
also discipline, integrity, awareness, with the validation of an
ancient and continuous tradition. The people who spin these yarns can
feel that there's more to a flogging than hammering away at someone
like a wood chopper hacking at a pile of logs. But it's a hard thing
to put into words. And truthfully, they are right in their
recognition; there is an eternal quality to this great art form,
something that's been here since life on earth began, something that
will be here until the world's end.
SM IS…
SM is music using the
human body as both instrument and audience. It is a dance in which
one partner leads another through a ritual of sensation, movement,
shared beauty and physical skill. It is method acting in which you
act out roles far more real than the face you show the outside world.
It is the near Olympian challenge of finding out what you can take,
how far you can go and discovering the joy in that endeavor. SM is
alchemy: the art of creating bliss from the base palette of
humiliation, physical pain, suffering, cruelty, and deprivation. It's
the seeming paradoxes of people seeking freedom through submission,
pleasure through pain, serenity, humility and vision, through the
naked exercise of power, illumination and spiritual apotheosis
through physical engagement. Though SM isn't always sexual it shares
Tantric yoga's sanctification of sex and bodily experience. Like the
chivalric codes which taught bloodthirsty medieval knights to be
lovers and philosophers, the martial arts which transform combat into
a kind of meditative practice or even the mock mortal combat of house
cats at play, SM takes the physical vocabulary of aggression and
cruelty and reshapes it into a shared activity that creates
closeness, joy, and wonder, while inflicting no lasting or
intentional harm. Even those with no personal interest in SM must
concede that the practical realities of living the SM life encourages
self knowledge, the pursuit of individual happiness, the sacrosanct
importance of others, and respect for human diversity and tolerance
for human peculiarity
SM is inexhaustible in
its range of expression. It's quiet women in librarian shades who
duck into dark closets and change into something else. It can
manifest itself as a fetishistic love for fur, feet, stockings, lace,
leather or a trillion other delights. It can manifest itself as a
delight in power, wielded in love instead of hatred and with the aim
of making the participants feel good, whatever feeling good means to
them. It can manifest itself as feelings of worship, service,
atonement or physical ordeal, ranging from the comparatively mild to
incredibly heavy. It spans anal, bondage, branding, cock & ball
torture (C.B.T.), electricity (static and direct current), fisting,
feminization, flogging, fire play, sexual penetration, spanking,
tickling, tactile play and countless others. Some find cigars to be
the most erotic things in the world.
Its root proclivities
are largely unknown. Some therapists conjecture that SM interest is
sparked by childhood trauma, since many scenes - spankings,
infantilism, and enemas - echo with themes of childhood. Some of SM
is surely cultural (caning fetishes are popular in Great Britain
where caning is part of school discipline). Some appear archetypal,
like the big-breasted fertility goddesses depicted in Paleolithic
sculpture to the contemporary pages of "D-Cup." Diane
Hanson, publisher of "Leg Show" theorizes that the
submissive desire for dominant women has its roots in the "Tower
of Mommy" that toddlers see looming above them (Hansen sees foot
and leg fetishism as having a similar genealogy due to their
proximity to the toddler's vantage point). The mounting evidence that
gayness might have genetic roots suggests that kink might also be
hereditary. But no one knows. It's like food: some people love Thai
cooking, others can't stand it. No reason, they just can't. For any
individual, SM interests are probably a mix of nature and nurture,
personal, social and primal.
Throughout this text I
will highlight what I believe to be the core tenants of SM. Here is
the first: the purpose of SM and the scene community is the
responsible quest for personal bliss, fulfillment and growth.
Involvement in SM can make you stronger, wiser, happier, more
fulfilled, more enlivened, more generous and more healed, if you do
it the right way. The activities you engage in, and what sort of
bliss fulfillment and growth you and your partners find in them are
entirely up to you. It may mean wearing a dress and makeup,
worshiping the feet of someone you find beautiful, the erotic
enslavement of someone else or submitting personally to hard physical
ordeal. This first principal has several important aspects to it:
that joy, like beauty, is in the eyes, heart and groin of the
beholder, and that even as we pursue and share these delights with
our loved ones, we do it with responsible and ethical intent. SM's
famous rubric declaring that SM should be "safe, sane and
consensual" is prudent advice, but really describes 'how' to
conduct SM responsibly.
SM is a sophisticated
erotic game and like any game there are guidelines for 'play',
generally involving measures to make sure both participants get
enough of what they want from the SM encounter. SM uses 'toys',
incorporates 'role play', and has much in common with high adrenaline
sports. With its emphasis on heightened sexuality and ritualized
rebellion, SM is similar to the rock and roll experience, in that
people are looking for a powerful ecstatic physical connection to
something greater than themselves. It is a craft that both demands
and rewards excellence.
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